News October 27, 2015

Two NZ acts make Hype Machine’s Ones To Watch list

Former Editor

Music blog aggregator Hype Machine has predicted New Zealand’s Broods and Yumi Zouma will be among the 20 artists set to break in 2014.

The Brooklyn-based site publishes its ‘Ones To Watch’ list at the end of each year, using the 814 blogs it sources. Last year Mercury Prize nominees Disclosure topped the list and Juno Award-winner Grimes before that in 2012.

2014’s mid-year list, posted in random order, features artists who are yet to release a full-length album. Broods and Yumi Zouma are placed among artists like Tove Lo, whose track Stay High has experienced high rotation on commercial radio of late, ZHU, whose March-released track Faded has been streamed over 3.7 million times on SoundCloud and Gorgon City, whose breakthrough single Ready For Your Love entered the UK Singles chart at #2.

Auckland’s Broods (Georgia and Caleb Nott) released their debut single Bridges last October; the track was streamed more than 200,000 times in its first week and debuted at #8 on the New Zealand single chart and peaked at #51 on the ARIA chart in January. Their most recent single, last month’s Mother & Father, peaked at #12 in New Zealand and earlier this month the pair performed the track on US talk show The Seth Myers Show. The track is currently in its first week at national commercial radio.

Dream-pop band Yumi Zouma achieved SoundCloud success before they’d even played a live show in their hometown of Christchurch. The trio (Charlie Ryder, Josh Burgess, and Kim Pflaum) released their self-titled EP in February through independent label Cascine and it’s already been touted locally by Mess + Noise and in the US by Pitchfork.

See below for Hype Machine’s mid-year Ones To Watch list

Broods

Zella Day

Marika Hackman

Kwabs.

Tinashe

SALES

Gorgon City

Moon Boots

Tove Lo

Phoria

IYES